Speaker
Description
Without real-time dose conformity feedback during treatment, ion beam therapy relies heavily on the accuracy of treatment planning systems. However, anatomical changes in patients can occur between treatment planning and irradiation, or even during treatment, necessitating the addition of safety margins around the target area to ensure adequate coverage despite these uncertainties. Therapeutic ion beams composed of positron-emitting isotopes of carbon and oxygen hold significant potential for advanced cancer treatments by combining therapeutic effectiveness with the added capability of in-beam positron emission tomography (PET) for image-guided hadron therapy. A series of experimental studies conducted at GSI, Darmstadt, Germany, under the ERC-funded project Biomedical Application of Radioactive Beams (BARB), investigated the prospects and challenges of image-guided hadron therapy using positron-emitting isotopes of carbon and oxygen. GSI is uniquely positioned to advance the development of precise, image-guided cancer therapies using positron-emitting therapy beams. Its versatile Fragment Separator (FRS) and extensive expertise in radioactive ion beams, biophysics, dosimetry, and radiobiology provided a robust foundation for this work. Secondary beams of positron emitters were produced and separated in-flight via fragmentation using the FRS with the established Bρ-ΔE-Bρ technique and subsequently delivered for imaging and biomedical experiments. These studies explored both physical and biological aspects, including the inflight production and separation of radioactive ion beams (RIB), the interplay between half-life, production cross-section, and measurement time, and demonstrated precise dose delivery with minimal toxicity in the treatment of a mouse osteosarcoma. Key results from the BARB project will be presented.
